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to the top of the world; nev - lilliana - 01-11-2020 There is a gust of air that comes from within the chest of the russet mare as she pushes her thoughts out with a passing breeze. Her refined head lowers as Lilli's thick mane is gently tousled by a passing breath of air that makes it way from the bluffs above down to the crashing waves below. Freedom had been her first impression of Nerine and now she wonders if that was just the wind echoing in her ears, telling her that there was nothing to hinder its travel here. That above the rest of Beqanna, it could be as wild and untamed as it liked. That it could taunt the waves and sing against the cliffs. Whatever its intent, with each journey into in Nerine it takes a piece of Lilliana's soul and lets it soar. Since the disappearance of Heartfire, there have been many visitors to Nerine. Some have come by way of Taiga and some are just figures that pass by the chestnut mare. Her ordinary colors and her easy-going demeanor make her just another face in the crowd. Someone they might not take notice of but she certainly notices them. Lilliana has ideas of why they come. They come in search of the missing Nerinian Queen. They might be curious about the new one - the silver dapple left in command - and come to see for themselves about the one that Heartfire has left as her heir. (When has Heartfire done anything that was not intentional?) They come seeking answers to a question that the former queen has left behind. Lilli comes only seeking her friend. She comes seeking the one who knew how afraid she had once been of dark, of the one who had seen her grief and her anger when Lilliana would have much rather given the illusion that she had neither. The one who knows more about her than most do and still calls her friend, despite all her failings. The others might come seeking answers but Lilliana comes because the visits are overdue and she already knows. Her blue eyes spy her against one of those cliffs that the rocky landscape was known for. (The wind rips past her and towards her friend, a blustering push towards Neverwhere. Lilliana walks forward because she has never been one to ask questions of the Fates or the Gods of her ancestors.) She comes alongside Never, where she stands looking out to a grey and endless sea. Where the tides carry things to other realms and existences that only one of them might even fathom. Her shoulder is light brush against the other mare and Lilliana stares out with her, two windswept creatures blurring in a biting breeze. The chestnut mare listens to the way that the waves crash against the rocks beneath them, appreciating the consistency of the tide below them. There is a moment of silence between the pair but Lilli doesn't keep her waiting long, "My mother and sister never agreed on much." The edges of her mouth lift fondly and something on her face almost gives way to laughter against the sharp and frigid cold around them. Softly she adds, "But Brielle begged for stories about the Amazons. There was nothing that could captivate her like the stories of the old Queens and their Jungle." As time goes on, she finds it gets easier to speak of them - the family that she aches for. Brielle, the fire of their family, the golden girl who had been born fighting and was always out to prove some point or another. She had clashed against that cool exterior of their mother, unbendable Aletta who had the mountains in her blood and refused to bow to anything. Together they had been nothing but constant discord throughout her youth. As Lilliana stands here with Neverwhere, it seems fitting though that they had bonded over this - over the sisterhood that had claimed the names of Antarda, Prague, Asylum and Twinge for their history. Her mother and sister had always seemed so impossibly fierce to Lilli. Standing here, it seems fitting that it is Neverwhere who now wears that crown and inherits all those legends. "Do you think when the magic remade the land that it gave Nerine these views because it knew what heights the Amazons might aspire too?" Her mind wonders, as it always does, and those thoughts go with another winter gust that passes by them. She remembers the impossible heights that they climbed to in the stories of her youth. The warmth of Neverwhere calls her back from the wind and the unknown places it travels. A familiar press of her shoulder into the Nerinian mare beside her and then the chestnut turns to study her with a careful gaze: "How have you been?" @[Neverwhere] rosé Lilli wanted to say hey RE: to the top of the world; nev - Neverwhere - 01-19-2020 Freedom for one mare, chains for another. Neverwhere takes up the responsibility she had never desired and Lilliana, always searching for her purpose, comes to shed the weight her family - and Life, and Lilli, herself - has draped across her shoulders. That one land can mean such different things is a surprising realization for her when no land has meant anything to her before at all. All the country she has passed through, those mountains and deserts and riverlands, none whispered to her the way Nerine does, hooking small tendrils into her soul like climbing ivy. She could tear it away, tear herself away, but there would be scars, now. Of course, scars hold no fear for her, not real ones, but the emotional ones she has not prepared for. She was so well guarded from those little hurts, there had been no time for them in her earliest years, but now? Now she must rebuild a kingdom that barrels towards conflict and there is more than a small part of her that screams to leave it. Leave it and run. There is nothing natural about these kingdoms and their politics, and nobody to stop her. Let them have their magic and their war and their ridiculous adherence to invisible boundaries, she could drop it all and leave as others have done before her. There is a battle deep within her, to stay or go, and neither side pulling ahead. When a shoulder brushes feather light against her, she does not need to look to know who it is, but any thought of running falls away like leaves from autumn trees. No one else in this place would touch her, not so easily. Nobody else who knew her would tell her a story like that, or ask her such a question. And from no one else would she tolerate it, even humor it, if only for a moment. "I think the Amazons should have kept to jungles, it seems to me that they broke apart on the cliffs." Perhaps the real truth is that they broke apart when their Jungle was destroyed, because what came to Nerine to rebuild was a patchwork - lost souls that drifted together, that stitched themselves together with those aspirations that Lilli mentions. They built on ashes, on memory, and for their effort they were rendered nothing more than memories themselves. Nothing left but the stories, now. She shakes her head against the legends that Lilliana tries to build in her head. They might be glorious and golden, but they aren't real. They aren't true, not really, told and retold and built into something magical and infallible. Still, she can feel the draw to such perfect, clean, stories, the satisfaction when everything resolves exactly the way you want it. But Life is messy, and kingdoms are worse. Nev exhales audibly, one pale eye focusing hard on Lilli, but she says nothing more of her thoughts on the subject. They both know that the crimson mare has experienced her share of that mire, and perhaps her escapism into such fairy tales is not so far from Neverwhere's own reliance on her ability to simply leave it all behind. "Busy. And angry," she pauses a moment before adding, "Only one of those is new." Self reflection is not beyond her, after all. She has always been aware of her moods and tendencies, she simply has no desire to change. She sidesteps, putting enough space between them so that she can touch her muzzle to the golden flame on Lilli's shoulder. "This is new. What else?" Neverwhere ... @[lilliana] RE: to the top of the world; nev - lilliana - 01-28-2020 LILLIANA light me up, i will blaze |